I’m planning on creating a number class. The purpose is to hold any amount of numbers without worrying about getting too much (like with int, or long). But at the same time not USING too much. For example:
If I have data that only really needs 1-10, I don’t need a int (4 bytes), a short(2 bytes) or even a char(1 byte). So why allocate so much?
If i want to hold data that requires an extremely large amount (only integers in this scenario) like past the billions, I cannot.
My goal is to create a number class that can handle this problem like strings do, sizing to fit the number. But before I begin, I was wondering..
bitset<1>, bitset is a template class that allows me to minipulate bits in C++, quite useful, but is it efficient?, bitset<1> would define 1 bit, but do I want to make an array of them? C++ can allocate a byte minimum, does bitset<1> allocate a byte and provide 1 bit OF that byte? if thats the case I’d rather create my number class with unsigned char*’s.
unsigned char, or BYTE holds 8 bytes, anything from 0 – 256 would only need one, more would require two, then 3, it would simply keep expanding when needed in byte intervals rather than bit intervals.
Which do you think is MORE efficient?, the bits would be if bitset actually allocated 1 bit, but I have a feeling that it isn’t even possible. In fact, it may actually be more efficient to allocate in bytes until 4 bytes, (32 bits), on a 32 bit processor 32 bit allocation is most efficient thus I would use 4 bytes at a time from then on out.
Basically my question is, what are your thoughts? how should I go about this implementation, bitset<1>, or unsigned char (or BYTE)??
Optimizing for bits is silly unless you’re target architecture is a DigiComp-1. Reading individual bits is always slower than reading ints – 4 bits isn’t more efficient than 8.
Use unsigned char if you want to store it as a decimal number. This will be the most efficient.
Or, you could just use GMP.